BACK of the BOOK
Heard in the Blogosphere
Building a Khan Academy for Health Care
“The recent expansion of the field of palliative medicine is a giant
step in the right direction. … Unfortunately, most Americans live and
die in a health-care system that does not offer patients and families
the educational tools they need to navigate care at the end of life.
If that were true of cancer therapies, there would be an uproar and
outrage. How many patients will we allow to die in our health care
system without their being fully informed of their options?”
—Angelo Volandes, MD, MPH, internal medicine physician at Massachusetts
General Hospital on the need to educate physicians on how to have end-of-life
discussions, in The New York Times
Not-So-Useful Findings
“In an ideal world, health policies are based on solid evidence. But
what if influential research is flawed? What if policymakers can’t
distinguish between weak and trustworthy studies? And what if the
resulting policies dramatically affect our health care system’s quality
and costs? … Our worry is that as a research community, we are
losing our humility and our caution in the face of declining research
funding, the need to publish and the need to show so-called useful
findings. Perhaps it’s becoming harder to admit that our so-called
big data findings are not as powerful as we wish or are, at best,
uninterpretable.”
Medicare Turns 50
As Medicare enters its 50th year,
health-care experts take a look
back on the federal program and
make projections for its future.
“Medicare – signed into law fifty
years ago, on July 30, 1965 –
was supposed to be just the
first step. … I see no better way
to celebrate Medicare reaching
its fiftieth anniversary than to
expand Medicare. If we follow
the lead of those visionary
architects fifty years ago, those
who come after us will inherit
a nation where affordable, first
class health insurance – Medicare
for All – is a birthright.”
—Nancy Altman, AB, JD, in The
Huffington Post
“After a lifetime of an utterly
boring personal health care
history, I was diagnosed
with cancer in 2013. Without
Medicare, I would be bankrupt
and probably dead by now.
I had three surgeries and
chemotherapy and paid less
than $1,000 out of pocket. I love
Medicare.”
—Judith M. Anderson, a Medicare
beneficiary, in The New York Times
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ASH Clinical News
“Medicare is a much larger,
more comprehensive, and more
complex program than it was
in 1965. For much of its history,
Medicare just paid bills. Now, it
has joined private-sector insurers
in the effort to manage care as
well. … The daily work of clinical
medicine will be infinitely more
complicated, frustrating, and
unsatisfying if Americans and
their leaders cannot come to
agreement on ways to make
Medicare sustainable and
effective for the next 50 years.”
—Ross Koppel, PhD and Stephen Soumerai, ScD, on flawed research that potentially impacts policy, in U.S. News & World Report